1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for processing a path management packet.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent times, research into a wireless ad-hoc network using a low power device is being conducted in earnest. A representative application of the wireless ad-hoc network using the low power device may include a wireless sensor network, a smart energy service, and the like. Such applications may perform regular collection, from a device, of a sensing value and an amount of power consumed. A general low power wireless ad-hoc network may generally adopt a data processing scheme in a tree structure in order to collect data, and use a tree routing scheme to collect and transfer data.
The tree routing scheme in a low power wireless network may be divided into a scheme in which a plurality of routers stores a routing table and transfers data using the information stored, and a source routing scheme in which a routing path is designated in a header.
The low power wireless network may fail to transfer data to a lower tree when a router using the two schemes is present in an identical single network. In general, the low power wireless network may use one of the two schemes selectively, and may not allow for interoperation of the two schemes.
In particular, two devices supporting the two schemes, respectively, may fail to communicate with one another although the two devices implement the same standard. Transitively, configuring a large network and establishing an actual environment may be difficult.
The low power wireless network may require a compatibility scheme between the two routing schemes to transmit and receive data between devices using the scheme using the routing table and the source routing scheme in configuring differing devices.